


The Rebuilding of the (literal) House of Cabal

by janie_tangerine



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Blood Drinking, Crack Treated Seriously, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, I Don't Even Know, I'm Going to Hell, Inappropriate Humor, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sibling Incest, The Author Regrets Nothing, Threesome - F/M/M, Weird Fluff, What Have I Done, construction work, not that with this fandom it'd surprise anyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 07:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12954633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “Remind me why we’re doing this,again?”“Because I don’t really want to know what the sentencepayments, but not in bloodentails, Johannes.”That, thought Johannes Cabal (known until this point as a necromancer of some little infamy) was a fair point, and he had to give it to his brother. And, admittedly, itwasa tiny bit heartwarming that he’d worry about Cabal paying for something in any other currency than money, even ifthisparticular currency wouldn’t have been anything such as his soul.That said, Horst’s alternative to rebuilding his, no,theirhouse, had sounded absolutely idioticthenand was proving itself to be evenmoreidiotic now, and Cabal really had no clue of why did he actually sayyes.Or: in which the Cabal brothers quite literally rebuild their poor burned down house from the ground up and Johannes Cabal figures things out along the way with substantial external help.





	The Rebuilding of the (literal) House of Cabal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [autumndynasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumndynasty/gifts).



> My dearest receiver, _this_ is probably not what you were expecting when you said you were interested in reading something about *Cabal's basement*, but it was what came into my head first when I read that request and... this crack happened. I don't even know. But I hope you enjoy this silliness nonetheless - happy Yuletide!
> 
> Other than that, I should probably specify that I do not own Johannes Cabal nor any related characters (and I'm sure Howard takes excellent care of them), that the only thing I own here is the crack and that many thanks are to be given to my beta reader who shall be outed when reveals are made and to WikiHow, without which I would have never even started to guess how the hell you build a house from the ground up. Thank you, WikiHow, you've been a lifesaver.

 

**Step One: Designing Your Home**

**(Including sub-steps such as: Design the Plans or Consult an Architect; Design the Living Spaces, up and including Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Special Function Rooms; Design the Utility Areas With an Eye Toward Function)**

 

“Remind me why we’re doing this, _again_?”

“Because I don’t really want to know what the sentence _payments, but not in blood_ entails, Johannes.”

 _That_ , thought Johannes Cabal (known until this point as a necromancer of some little infamy) was a fair point, and he had to give it to his brother. And, admittedly, it _was_ a tiny bit heartwarming that he’d worry about Cabal paying for something in any other currency than money, even if _this_ particular currency wouldn’t have been anything such as his soul.

That said, Horst’s alternative to rebuilding his, no, _their_ house, had sounded absolutely idiotic _then_ and was proving itself to be even _more_ idiotic now, and Cabal really had no clue of why did he actually say _yes_ –

No, he actually did.

Because when his brother had just looked at him and said, in his most excited tone (which could be as well be defined bordering towards _overblown excitement_ , truth to be told), “Why don’t _we_ do it ourselves,” and then started going on a tirade about how _he_ would have no problem doing the heavy lifting and so on, Cabal’s only objection (that he could come up with on the spot) had been, “Horst, we both have no bloody clue of how one _builds a house_.” At which Horst had cheerfully (or possibly, with overblown excitement) replied, “But Johannes, no one is born knowing everything, and figuring it out together can’t be too bad, right? Besides, how hard can it be? And _I_ was paying attention, when Father refurbished the old one,”, and he had looked so… actually, _genuinely_ excited at the prospect of _building a damned house_ , with _him_ , that Cabal – most probably thanks to his treacherous soul – had relented and said _fine_ , as long as _Horst_ did the heavy lifting.

Except that of course _that_ somehow put him on the… architectural side of things. Or so Horst had decided.

“Sorry, why should _I_ do it?” Cabal had asked.

Horst had sent him a look that was bordering in between amusement and concealed pity, and Cabal hadn’t known if he liked it or not.

“Because,” Horst had said, “ _you_ are the one who designed that basement so well and who actually has a knack for it. Also, we should do this equally, and anyway, who knows anything of engineering?”

Fine, Cabal _did_ know more about engineering than his brother ever could, but he should have understood from that point on that it was a very, very bad idea.

Nonetheless, here _they_ were – he was sitting at a small table that Fräulein Bartos quite graciously offered to go buy in town, because they didn’t know _her_ yet, along with some more furniture for the desolation that Cabal’s basement was at that moment (of course, the _visible_ part of it. The other one hadn’t been touched by the fire, thankfully), trying to at least sketch a plan for the damned house. He’d have to find a _real_ engineer after he was done, though, _if_ he ever was, to check it over and make sure the entire thing wouldn’t fall over on itself.

“Fine,” he agreed, “but this is ridiculous.”

“Why?” Horst cheerfully replied as he tinkered around the generator – Cabal hadn’t even tried to ask him _how_ he’d know how one worked. He obviously did learn somewhere, since the thing hasn’t exploded on him yet. “I’m finding this quite relaxing.”

“Good thing you can go out in the sun now, you have a career in front of you if people in this town forget we’re related.”

“And what has you sounding so devastated?”

Cabal groaned. “The old house was entirely too spacious for me, and was the right space when it was four of us living in it.”

“Yes. And?”

“ _And_ , Horst, I think I am not quite sure of _how many people actually would have to fit in here_. Let us suppose it would be you and I, and Fräulein Bartos when she returns from her travels.” Neither of them had held it against the lady when she said that she _would_ have to take a trip to her homeland to check in with her former employers, and she _did_ say she would come back, and Horst seemed entirely sure that she would, so Cabal had taken it for granted. “That’s three already. Then – I do not have a clue if Madam Zarenyia ever intends to grace our company with her presence again, but should she do it, I _think_ she would require a room, wouldn’t she?”

“… Fair,” Horst replied, his eyes still entirely fixed on the generator. “I don’t think her sharing with anyone on a permanent basis would be a good idea.”

“Yes, and didn’t you want to go look for your ghost protégé in London, too? I should doubt that you would come back without her, and _she_ certainly shouldn’t share with Zarenyia.”

Cabal _knew_ his brother was grinning as he replied, “No, she certainly shouldn’t.”

“Well, you do realize that five people among which three women, one of which is a _demon princess_ and one of which is under ten years old, maybe need different accommodations?”

“Johannes, you figured out how _to bring people back to life_ and you can’t figure that maybe two bathrooms would be beneficial, in this situation?”

… _Fair enough_ , Cabal thought, it seemed like a fairly stupid objection if put like that.

Still –

“Fine, two bathrooms, one kitchen, and how many bedrooms, _six_? _Seven_ , assuming there might be the need? Four floors aren’t enough for that many.”

“Then make it five.”

“I somehow doubt it would hold,” Cabal replied, trying to recall the layout of the ground floor, or better, _how_ the electric circuit was placed and how the pipes leading to the water boiler did.

Or maybe he could leave that to the engineer.

He sighed and moved on to quickly re-sketch the ground floor – at least _that_ one would require no changes since parlor and kitchen would have done fine where they used to be. He made the kitchen slightly larger than it used to be, and removed part of the entrance to enlarge the parlor, but other than that it was largely the same as it used to be.

He thought, _maybe they would gain space if he slept in the attic laboratory_? It was large, after all, and it wouldn’t have been anything new if he did. He quickly sketched a map, including space for a bed and a wardrobe, and moved on to the other two floors, where he has to save space for a bathroom on each, but at the end he thought that the two large rooms on the first floor and three smaller ones on the second would do fine and would actually leave places to spare for – for _whom?_

It’s not as if Johannes Cabal ever prided himself on his many visitors.

Until _now_ , but Horst would live there, and Horst always was more social and he always _made friends_ , and no, that did not include the lacrosse team, and whether Fräulein Bartos came back soon or late, he doubted they _wouldn’t_ want people around, and so he should take that into consideration.

Somehow, it didn’t sound like the huge sacrifice he’d have thought it years ago.

“Look at that,” Horst said then, startling him from his work.

“What?”

“I think I’ve got – _there_ ,” Horst went on, and then Cabal turned just in time to see him turn on the generator.

The tiny, pitiful bulb that Cabal had attached to what used to be a ceiling lamp in the basement and that now is just one solitary wire came back to life after a moment or two of hesitation.

A moment later, Horst was right next to him, _curse him and his still-supernatural speed_ , clapping him on the back too hard for Cabal’s tastes.

“See,” he said, “electricity’s working, I see you have plans, we’re already at a good point.”

“Aren’t you optimist,” Cabal groaned. “Or did you forget we need the electrical system, and the plumbing, and –”

“Johannes,” Horst interrupted him, “ _for once_ , will you just… relax? And let me see.”

“It’s not –”

“Don’t be nonsensical, it looks _pristine_. Hm, two bathrooms, good thinking, I see the kitchen’s larger –”

“What –”

“My eyesight is still better than yours,” Horst said, and moved on to the next sheets. “Hm, yes, sounds appropriate. Enough space for everyone, indeed – wait, what’s with the bed in the _laboratory_?”

Cabal shrugged. “If I sleep there a _lot_ of issues are solved,” he said. “And more space is freed.”

Horst _looked_ at him.

Then he _kept on looking at him_.

“Horst? Do we have a problem?”

Horst didn’t reply but rather grabbed Cabal’s pencil, looked at how he had placed everyone in their assigned room leaving a couple free, and then crossed himself and Fräulein Bartos from the largest bedroom, wrote down _Johannes_ in their place and then shrugged. “We’ll see about accommodations when she comes back. Meanwhile, you’re _not_ going to the attic. So, shall we celebrate?”

“… _What_ should we celebrate exactly?”

Horst just _looked_ at him again. It was starting to become unnerving.

“Oh, I don’t know, that we have plans for the new house, that the fire didn’t kill the generators, that we’re both alive, and I can actually _sleep_ tonight, and –”

“Fine, _fine_ , I get it, let’s go back to the shed. We can go find an engineer tomorrow to check this over, because I am _not_ trusting myself to do the math with this.”

“But of course. Oh, you _are_ cooking bacon, aren’t you?”

Cabal didn’t even roll his eyes nor asked Horst why couldn’t he cook his own – as far as their debt was repaid, he kind of felt like he _did_ owe that to his brother, still, and anyway it wasn’t not an entirely displeasing sensation to… well, cook something for people who enjoyed it.

Johannes Cabal wondered, not for the first nor for the last time, if not having his soul for _that_ long and then having it again after years somehow broke something within him, and then decided that it was an irrelevant and useless thought that he had no business pondering any longer, and went out of his basement and what was left of his stairs into the barren and burned soil on which their house had once been built.

 

**Step Two: Breaking Ground**

  **(Including sub-steps such as: Laying the Foundation, Set Up Building Lines, Install Your Chosen Floor)**

 

“Isn’t building the fence this far quite a bit _too much_?”

Cabal glared at his brother, then shook his head and stuck the stake he was handling into the ground. “Yes, and what happened just _now_? The house got burned.”

“Right, fair, but we’re talking three times the original –”

“And anyway, I’m not going to have them murder anyone who crosses _this_ line.”

Cabal could see Horst glancing nervously at the fairies chattering not far from them, then at the _other_ line he had drawn connecting another couple of stakes he planted halfway in between the outer fence and the house’s door, and the third which was where his garden originally stopped back before _it got burned_.

“Johannes, that sounds like you might be, uh, overtly paranoid even for _your_ standards.”

Cabal ignored him and the subtle dig at how his paranoid standards might be well beyond any socially acceptable conception of paranoia. “They will have instructions. Anyone who crosses _this_ line here and isn’t the postman gets _nicely_ discouraged. Anyone who crosses the second gets _rudely_ discouraged.”

“So we can eat them if they cross the third line?” A-fair-number-of-the-fae-which-used-to-live-in-Cabal’s-garden chirped happily from somewhere on their left.

“Exactly,” Cabal said, smiling ever so slightly.

“That – sounds _more_ than a tad paranoid,” Horst objected weakly, and Cabal knew he _wouldn’t_ object strongly, if anything because whatever he said, the answer would have been that _without_ heavier wards and without the fence they ended up with a house on fire, and therefore Cabal’s paranoia would have been entirely justified.

“I’m not famous in my line of work for letting anything fall to chance, if I can avoid it,” Cabal merely stated. “And anyway, that’s not negotiable.”

“Fine,” Horst conceded, “but _only_ the postman can get to the door? I mean, _that_ is what sounds most paranoid.”

 _Served me fine until recently_ , Cabal didn’t say, mostly because while it _did_ serve him fine it didn’t mean that he _enjoyed_ only feeling like he could safely open the door to a stranger if it was the postman or Sergeant Parkin, because _anyone_ else on the opposite side would most likely have brought bad news.

“Seems to me like letting strangers get to the house means that we find ourselves having to rebuild the entire bloody thing, Horst.”

“Seems to me,” Horst kept on, “that such a great display of forces to defend yourself would be justified if it was just you living in there.”

“All right, _so_?”

“So,” Horst kept on, and then Cabal almost screamed in surprise when his brother’s hand not so carefully slapped his back, “if _I_ am to stay there permanently and I still have _these_ ,” he said, showing his fangs for a moment before pulling them back, “you _can_ afford to be slightly less paranoid about who comes up to the door. I mean, if they have bad intentions I can deal with them.”

… _That_ , Cabal had to admit, was a perfectly valid objection, and _why didn’t he even consider it before_?

Right.

Because the last time they sort of lived together they were in the carnival’s train, and after then Horst was either dead or they were working on accessing the Five Ways and then the house got burned, so it’s not like they actually re-adjusted to live together, and while Horst was sort of a downgraded vampire at this point he _still_ could take care of any intruder without much of a problem, and he should have thought of it.

 _Maybe relying only on yourself takes a toll on you after a while_ , he thought and didn’t say.

It should have probably worried him that Horst was looking at him in such a way that – was making Cabal think that he _did_ get the point.

“Maybe we can compromise,” Horst said.

“I’m listening.”

“They can discourage people who aren’t the postman or the Sergeant or whoever else you might deem worthy of knocking on your door. If they are _obviously_ badly-intentioned, they can have them. Otherwise I can take care of it. Does that sound any good to you? Never mind that if Zarenyia actually does decide to pay us a visit, I think _she_ would handle the situation way before I could.”

It _didn’t_ sound too good to Cabal’s garden, from the way they protested, but Cabal couldn’t honestly care less for that – they were still better off with him than without and they knew it. And – Horst _did_ have a point. Especially about Zarenyia.

“Fine,” he relented. They can have the _obviously_ bad-intentioned only.”

He shouldn’t ponder why Horst seemed _that_ delighted about his resolution, so he did not and he proceeded to grab again his brush and white paint and neatly keep on drawing a line around _the entirety_ of the property he purchased. Before, he just stuck with the garden, but he actually owned more than that and at this point he was going to be damned thorough.

Meanwhile, he decided that no one should look as damned excited as his brother did at the prospect of putting up a fence, but if Horst was having fun, good for him – at least _one of them_ did, because as he was concerned, the sooner they were done with this farce, the better.

 

**Three: Building Walls & Roof**

**(Including sub-steps such as: Framing the Walls, Plumbing and Bracing Them, Lay Out the Marks for Setting Your Roof Trussers)**

 

The moment they were done, Cabal _was_ going to grab Horst and ask him to just sit down a moment and let him at least try to figure out his current condition, if anything because it’s been weeks since Horst drank his phial and he’s had to find blood maybe twice since then, and according to him it was nothing the two people he had targeted wouldn’t replenish with their usual weekly dose of meat. And meanwhile he’s gone with Cabal to _buy materials_ and to see a few architects and engineers in the next town over, and now that Cabal’s plans were all approved and corrected, after building the forsaken fence himself, he had been quite happily re-building the first floor’s walls, and in two days he has almost finished at least the external part with only minimal help from him, Denzil and Dennis, and he’s been working _all bloody day_ without wearing a shirt.

For days straight.

And he was _nowhere near fatigued_.

Cabal told himself he wanted to figure his brother’s current condition out just out of scientific curiosity, but admittedly he also wanted to make sure there wasn’t a catch, since it looked… too good. Nothing comes without a price, he’s learned in these long years, and it just seemed somehow fishy that his brother would get only the good things without side-effects.

Then again, what was in that phial had been obtained at a high cost, and something that can bring people back to life at once _most probably_ wouldn’t have a catch, since the entire catch was _getting to it_ in the first place.

Still –

Still, he was _worried_ , and he didn’t want to be, because _why_ would he be, and at the same time since _he_ certainly was not going to risk injuring his hands piling bricks he had little to do other than revising the plans, worrying after the food and check over Horst’s work.

Which meant being subjected to the sight of his brother _not_ wearing a shirt for the damned entire day, and it was _not_ a sight that should have phased him either way, except that it kind of _did_ , and it wasn’t because Horst was an attractive man, which is something Cabal had known since he could grasp the concept of _being attractive_.

It was that Horst seemed to _actively gloat_ in going around shirtless all day long.

“You know,” Cabal told him as he brought over some food from the shed – the last thing he’d have thought was that he’d end up as the designated maid in this arrangement –, “I suppose you can’t catch illnesses in your current state, but this is _England_. It’s not anywhere near warm enough for – this.”

Horst just wiped his hands on his trousers and grabbed the plate from Cabal’s hands – no one should look at bacon with such longing, Cabal thought.

“Well,” Horst said, “first of all, I wouldn’t want to ruin my clothes. They’re _nice_ clothes.”

“You can always buy _other_ clothes.”

“And they’d be uncomfortable for _this_ kind of work anyway. So, why bother? Also, it’s cold according to _you_.”

“… It’s _not_ , according to you?”

Horst took a bite from his plate, then shrugged with such nonchalance, Cabal envied him for a moment. _How_ can anyone do that so effortlessly?

“Johannes, I spent years as a vampire, I can assure you having a regular body temperature is quite heavenly. So, yes, actually this is quite warm as far as I’m concerned. _And_ , even if it wasn’t, just the fact that I can be out in the sun without a shirt would be enough of a reason to not ruin my clothes any further. Why, are you worried I might catch a chill?”

 _No_ , Cabal thought, _that’s absolutely not what I am worrying about._

“I am quite sure you would survive that even if you should,” Cabal muttered, eating his own bacon and trying to not stare at the absolutely delighted expression that was currently taking shape on Horst’s face as he ate.

No one should look _this_ happy because they’re eating bloody bacon.

He took a bite of his own portion. It wasn’t even _particularly good_ bacon, even if it was acceptable.

“I was thinking,” Horst said.

“Now I will have to get worried, won’t I?”

“You’re _hilarious_ , Johannes. I was thinking, we should get the paint.”

“Sorry?”

“Not that I’m not doing a great job of placing those bricks as neatly as it goes, but do you really want nothing on the walls?”

Cabal’s face suddenly contorted in distaste – Horst _did_ have a point.

“Well, fine. I should hope you aren’t thinking any color that’s not white.”

Horst scoffed. “Of course not, I wouldn’t want the _house_ to look like a carnival. You wouldn’t sleep in it. _However_ , the fence also should be painted.”

“The _fence_?”

“Johannes, it’s all old wood and while it was _good_ wood, it’s not really nice to look at.”

“… If that’s so important to you, I suppose we can get some more white – _why_ are you looking at me like that?”

“The white house is all fine,” Horst said, “but the _fence_ , too? Shouldn’t it be at least somewhat welcoming?”

Cabal almost spat out his bacon.

“Why would a _fence_ be welcoming when it’s supposed to keep people _out_?”

“There’s no reason to be _exceedingly_ obvious about it,” Horst said. “Besides, if people you don’t want in your property come in, either the garden or I will take care of it, so why not paint it some other nicer color?”

“… And what did you have in mind?” Cabal asked, feeling his resolve slipping and feeling thoroughly terrified through every second of the process.

“Why not orange?”

“ _Orange_ ,” Cabal parroted. Did he even _own_ anything in orange? Most probably not. It was absolutely not a color whose existence he usually considered beyond fruit consumption.

“What has orange ever done to you?”

 _It’s not black or white_ , Cabal wanted to reply, but that wouldn’t have been a… proper reply, he figured.

“It’s… usually not my color,” he finally said, after taking another bite of bacon. Horst kept on looking at him with that insufferable _calm_ face as he kept on eating and obviously enjoying his lunch, and suddenly he felt like he had no serious reason to refuse that request that wouldn’t have sounded very weak, and after all, it was… a fence. Did he even care? “But,” he conceded, “if _you_ paint it, I guess it can be orange.”

He almost choked on his bacon as Horst slapped his back, _again_ without trying to keep his strength in check.

“Excellent,” Horst said, looking so bloody happy about it that who’d have had the courage to object? “Then I suppose we could go back for more paint when I’m done with the walls, shall we?”

“I suppose so,” Cabal choked, and on one side he kept on wondering _why_ giving in to Horst’s absolutely _ridiculous_ ideas was making him feel somewhat _not_ annoyed, on the other he merely hoped that after building the house themselves _and_ the orange fence Horst’s ridiculous ideas would stop there.

He spared a look for the zombies, now intent on preparing some more mortar. Well, at least they were being useful, he supposed.

“Are you sure you don’t feel like joining me?” Horst asked not long later, still _entirely_ too happily piling bricks over what Cabal figured was the kitchen wall.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” he replied, forcing himself to _not_ stare at the way the muscles flexed along his brother’s back – now _that_ was something he should _not_ be staring at, for _any_ reason. “Have fun with your bricks.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing!”

Cabal went back to his floor two and three layouts and blueprints and resolutely did _not_ look up every ten seconds to check on whatever in ever-loving Hell Horst was doing.

Not that falling from the ladder he was currently on would have killed him, of course.

\--

A few days later, Cabal was trying to get some sleep in the cellar – hardly the choice he’d have made if he _had_ any, but the woodshed was not ideal, and after he cleaned out the entire place while Horst was working on the first floor’s roof, it was acceptable. He _did_ need to buy a new bed as soon as possible, given how sleeping over a few blankets was doing nothing for his back.

 _Trying_ being the key word, because first he heard frantic banging on the door, and then –

“Johannes, you should get the door before the garden forgets that the postman is off limits!”

 _Verdammt_ , Cabal thought as he put on his jacket in haste, disgusted at the state of his clothing and vowing to buy new proper nightwear as soon as he had a wardrobe, and then ran upstairs and opened the door.

The poor postman was indeed standing on the doorstep, shaking in fear, while Horst cheerfully waved at the both of them from the above floor where he was nailing _something_ to the beam that was supposed to hold the ceiling that would become the first floor pavement, too.

“Uhm, I have a few deliveries for Mr. Johannes Cabal?” The man asked in a thin voice.

Cabal, who hadn’t had time to find his spectacles, stared back at him and rolled his eyes. “That would be me.”

“Right, er, so, I took the liberty of leaving the shingles near the woodshed, as you had requested. It was all paid for, so I just need a signature here.”

Cabal nodded and signed. “Then?”

“Your paint is also just outside the fence. Both colors. The ironmonger’s wife compliments you on the shade, by the way.”

“The shade of _white_?”

“Uh, no, the shade of orange. She said it was a lovely hue.”

“Oh, I picked it,” Horst said from above. “Delighted to hear she approves.”

“And, lastly, there’s – this,” the man said, handing Cabal what looked like… _a postcard_ from Vienna, or so it seemed. Cabal grabbed it quickly and handed the man what spare change he had in his pocket, signed the order for the paint and watched the poor bastard run all the way back to the small van he drove.

The garden sighed sadly.

Cabal slammed the door closed and took a better look at the postcard.

“ _Mein Gott_ ,” he muttered, “I can’t believe this.”

“You can’t believe _what_?” Horst said, jumping from the above floor right in front of him.

Of course, shirtless. And completely covered in plaster dust, except that regardless his hair _still_ didn’t look dirty and, to Cabal’s fascination, it _did_ seem that after however many days this entire disaster had taken out in the sun, Horst _was_ somehow getting a tan. Not a very good one, given the weakness of the British sun, but still, he wouldn’t have gained any of that color in his previous condition.

“This,” Cabal said, and let him grab the card.

“Oh, Vienna, how lovely. I haven’t been in years, not that there might have been time. Who – how _lovely_.”

“… How is _that_ lovely?”

“Well, knowing Zarenyia –”

“ _Darling Johannes, you wouldn’t be believe how much fun we’re having. Your human cities are_ so _delightful! And those Secessionist paintings, or at least I’m told they’re so-called, are to die for! I don’t think I will go back to Hell that soon. I hope you’re having as much fun as_ we _are!_ , and then she signs it with a _heart_ near her name and Miss Barrow’s next? I mean, _she’s a devil_ , and she’s sending me _postcards_?”

“Why not?” Horst shrugged. “It’s the _nice_ thing to do, Johannes.”

“ _What_?”

“You _do_ send your friends postcards when you go on vacation. She’s just catching up on our customs very quickly, I suppose. So, did he say the paint has arrived?”

“It seems so –”

“ _Excellent_. The moment I’m done with the floor we can start painting the outside.”

“ _We_?”

“Well, we’d be done sooner, and don’t tell me you would be bad at _using a brush_ ,” Horst winked, and then left to go grab the thrice-darned paint.

At least, Cabal thought, the orange one wouldn’t go _on the house’s walls_.

\--

“How do you find this _soothing_?”

“How do you _not_?”

Cabal rolled his eyes as he rolled over his shirt’s sleeves – this one was definitely a goner, but he utterly refused to do something as narcissistic as painting his own walls _without a shirt_.

“It’s _mindless_.”

“Johannes, you might’ve always been the brighter one in between the two of us, but _sometimes_ it’s not a crime to shut off your brain.”

Cabal bit down a retort that wouldn’t have sounded anywhere near fair nor nice, and maybe he wouldn’t have when he didn’t have his soul back, but now – now it wasn’t worth it, nor would he have found much joy in it.

“It’s still not… _soothing_.”

“And you’re still doing a fairly good job of it,” Horst said. “I mean, look at that. I’ve never seen paint applied more accurately.”

“If I do something I do it _well_ ,” Cabal muttered, even if it _was_ somehow comforting to hear that he wasn’t getting it wrong when he couldn’t remember the last time that he did any work that didn’t require actually using his brain.

Still, how did Horst stand that smell, he couldn’t begin to imagine. Nor how could he stand having paint _all over his chest_ by the time the day was over.

Maybe, Cabal thought, _maybe_ they should move on to the bathroom as soon as they were done with this dumb painting business, because the shower in the woodshed would _never_ have been good enough to wash that off _him_ , too.

\--

“Have you even slept _any_ in the last month or so?” Cabal asked Horst later – they both took a shower, but it hadn’t worked that well, not when they both had paint on them. At least it was white. He resolved to let Horst have the damned fence when it was time.

“Oh, I did,” Horst said. “Outside.”

“ _In the open_.”

“It’s nice. And I get to see the sunrise.”

Why, _why_ did his brother _always_ have to say things that would effectively destroy any sensed objection anyone could have? Of course, _he gets to see the sunrise_.

“Fine, but you _do_ see it’s going to rain later, don’t you?” Good thing that the paint _outside_ the house was dry hours ago.

“That’s also true,” Horst said wistfully as he glanced at the dark gray cloud looming on the horizon. “I suppose there’s the shed –”

“Horst, the cellar isn’t _that_ small. We can both fit in there.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right. We _do_ need beds, though.”

“If we had just called in that favor –”

“Nonsense. I’m done with the floor, tomorrow I can work on the walls and within the week we’ll have the first floor ready and we can worry about beds.”

“But –”

“Johannes, I’m _not_ making pacts with _anyone_ ever again if I can help it, and given how it went last time, I’m not letting _you_ do it.”

“You know I am an adult who can take his own decisions, don’t you?”

“Of course, and even if you look older than I am right now, I _still_ have enough years on you to know when it’s a bad idea. _No pacts_.”

Cabal huffed and decided to let the topic drop – no point in insisting, especially considering what happened the last time there was any pact in between the two of them.

“Fine. No pacts. But we need new clothes.”

“ _You_ need new clothes. I only need new trousers.”

“Because you’re going to spend the next month or so shirtless?”

“That was exactly what I was planning on doing.”

Cabal shook his head and declared it a lost battle, and headed for the woodshed to put together some food while Horst went to find some damned shirt to put on.

He was _not_ , really, _not_ in any way, shape or form moved by his brother’s resolve when it came to not letting him call upon demonic favors, and so he didn’t consider actually asking regardless even if it meant spending another month, at least, in this bloody mess of a house.

\--

“You might have had a point,” Horst said, not long later.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, sleeping out in the open is nice, but here it’s warmer.”

“That’s what a functioning boiler and generator will do,” Cabal said dryly. “Please work on that roof quickly because I do need a damned bed.”

“If you worked on the roof I could work on the plaster, you know.”

“I haven’t the faintest clue about how you _work on a roof_.”

“Fair enough,” Horst replied. “I’ll see if those two are any use when it comes to helping out.”

“Who, Dennis and Denzil? Good luck, I’m not helping you.”

“I wasn’t asking. What, do you sleep in those clothes?”

“They’re ruined with paint, might as well,” Cabal sighed, thinking fondly of his lost sensible black and white outfits, all destroyed.

Horst shook his head and kicked off his shoes. The shirt he had on was pristine clean, of course, and he wasn’t wearing any trousers, which was no surprise, but when Cabal saw him eyeing the space next to the boiler he couldn’t help groaning out loud.

“Are you planning to sleep _there_?”

“Well, it’s right next to –”

“I have _five_ blankets here and they were from the master bedroom. They’re large enough for two.”

“Johannes, how _nice_ –”

“You say another word, you sleep on the ground.”

Horst raised his hands and moved in next to him, under the first two blankets. Cabal had opted to fold three on the ground, which made it slightly less hard than it’d have been lying on just one – not ideal, but better than nothing. Horst didn’t, surprisingly, try to hog the covers. Rather, he just took his half and brought it over his shoulders, and for a moment Cabal thought, _this is too quiet_.

He had expected more chattering, but Horst just said nothing and Cabal figured that it’s good enough. He was about to close his eyes when a bout of thunder from outside made _something_ tremble above them – Cabal hoped it wasn’t the door, or they’d find a wall knocked down in the morning, and a moment later Horst had dashed out of the bed and turned off the electricity generator.

“Wouldn’t want for some lightening to fry it and I have to fix it _again_ tomorrow,” he explained as he moved back under the covers.

“Sensed thinking, for once,” Cabal muttered. He turned a bit, trying to fit his arm someway comfortable – too bad that it slammed against Horst’s.

“What – you’re _cold_ ,” Cabal said, entirely aware of how idiotic it sounded.

“Apparently, I am during the night,” Horst said. “I mean, I’m _colder_ during the night. During the day it’s normal, as you’ve seen.”

“And you slept on the _outside_?”

“Still less cold than it used to be, Johannes.” He seems about to say something else, then _doesn’t_. “It’s adorable that you’re fussing, though.”

“I am _not_ fussing,” Cabal replied at once.

“Why, do you think I haven’t noticed?” Why did the idiot sound so gloating? “It’d be hard to, since you _don’t_ usually fuss.”

“I am absolutely not _fussing_ and surely not over you.”

“Johannes, you might be the smart one in between the two of us, but do you think that I can’t recognize it when I see it and that I don’t know that you’re fretting because you think there must be some kind of catch in the Five Ways?”

_How –_

Cabal said nothing, because if he did he’d have to admit it, and he was _not_ going to –

“It’s been _weeks_ ,” Horst said. “I think that if there was a catch, it’d have happened by now, wouldn’t it? And I doubt Miss Barrow would be sending us postcards from Vienna if there was any catch in it, since _that_ ’s why she’s alive.”

“That is – that is a fair point,” Cabal conceded. “I mean, it _is_. It makes sense.”

“So _stop fretting_ , Johannes.”

 _If only it was that easy,_ he thought. “I am not _fretting_.”

“If you say so,” Horst replied, still sounding too calm for Cabal’s tastes, “but I think I know what’s your problem.”

“There’s _no_ problem,” Cabal denied, not too convincingly (to his own horror).

He couldn’t see Horst smirking, but he could feel it as he felt cold fingers wrap around his wrist and slamming his palm against the left side of Horst’s chest.

Oh.

_Oh._

Cabal could feel Horst’s heartbeat right under his hand, slightly slower than a regular person’s – he counted one beat every three, roughly – but it was _there_ , slow and steady and regular as a Swiss clock, and it should have been enough, but he didn’t move his hand away, not when a lot of unwelcome thoughts were swirling through his head

( _you fixed it, you made it right and it was worth it, you paid that debt, ten years too late but you did, you fixed_ him)

and he didn’t know whether he wanted them to stop or not.

He also was keenly aware of the ridiculousness of the situation – he was sharing a _blanket_ with his half-naked brother right over where his dead then-soon-to-be wife was resting, hopefully not _forever_ , a half-naked brother he had sacrificed in his quest to get her back and that he sacrificed her to have back, and as he felt that steady thrumming under his fingers he wished he could regret it, but he _couldn’t_ , he just – couldn’t.

He tried to get a grip on himself, nodding and moving his hand back, but then _something_ told him that _no_ , it was too soon, and he ended up with his hand around Horst’s wrist, his thumb feeling his pulse. Still one beat every three that a normal person would produce, but still.

 _Still_.

“ _There’s no problem_ ,” Horst whispered, in an imitation of his previous tone that had no right to sound that accurate. “Sure there isn’t.”

“There _isn’t_ ,” Cabal said, and then promptly betrayed his own words by raising his other hand to Horst’s neck, finding the pulse right over his throat, where surely there was none until a month ago –

And where there was one now. Same rhythm, same strength.

“Why,” Horst said a moment later, and Cabal almost moved his hand back, feeling his throat thrum under his fingers, but then did not. “I was severely mistaken back in the day.”

“About _what_? And _when_?”

“When you didn’t let me feed in the crypt,” Horst said. “I mean, I thought it was the homoerotic angle, but seems to me like you have _no_ problem with that whatsoever.”

If he had remembered how, in that moment, Cabal would have _maybe_ laughed.

Instead, he merely cleared his throat. “What,” he said, “are you implying exactly?”

Horst laughed again, and he shivered at feeling it bubble up under his fingertips.

“Johannes, I am implying that _this_ thing we’re doing, actually happening right now, means you have _no_ issues with that angle, and that I should probably resent that you _really_ thought I would kill you, if you ran.”

“I – you would have had your reasons,” Cabal said, still not able to move away his damned hands, both of them.

“As if I ever could,” Horst said, and Cabal didn’t know _what_ was in his voice that just made his brain stop working, nor he knew _who_ out of the two of them moved first.

Admittedly, he would have to give it to Horst.

There is nothing _not_ homoerotic – in the _least_ worrying of senses – in sharing a bed with someone, while being _half-naked_ , and kissing them with one hand on their wrist and one on their neck while their hands are grabbing the side of your head and your neck with way more gentleness than you’d deserve.

He should probably be worrying that he’s kissing _his damned brother_ , but they did both move at once, didn’t they?

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says, weakly, when they move apart, but not too much. For that matter, if he moved an inch, they’d be kissing again.

“Maybe,” Horst conceded. “However, you should probably know that Miss Bartos _did_ tell me, before she left, to solve _whatever unresolved problem I had with you, because anyone could see it from miles_.”

For the second time in entirely too little, Cabal’s brain about stopped at a halt. “Are you actually telling me she _encouraged you_?”

“I am fairly sure she _didn’t discourage_ me, if that’s all the same to you.”

He didn’t know if it was _all the same to him_ , but what he knew was that he didn’t want to move, and that it seemed like Horst didn’t, either, and so he nodded and laid back down slowly.

“I wouldn’t run now,” he said then, because he _had_ to and Horst had to know, as horribly embarrassing as it sounded.

“That’s lovely to hear, and _are you offering_?”

“What if I am?”

 _I must have lost my mind_ , he thought just as he said it, but _maybe_ he was, and maybe running felt like the logical thing to do when _he didn’t have a soul_ , but right then he just could think, _how did it get that bad_ , and then deduce that _of course, it was your own damned fault_.

“You’d spare me a trip to the village,” Horst said thoughtfully. “But then again, I wouldn’t need that many. But – you _really_ are?”

“How many bloody times do I need to tell you? I don’t propose anything if I don’t want it.”

“Ah, _there_ you are,” Horst said, “I was starting to worry,” and Cabal would have asked what the ever-loving hell he meant, except that then he was moving closer and not aiming for his mouth, and he barely had the time to think _what have I just agreed to_ before he felt a pair of sharp teeth prodding at his collarbone. It most probably said a lot about how far beyond any kind of decency they both were that the moment he felt teeth piercing his skin it didn’t hurt beyond the prickle of it, or that he felt a warm, _pleasurable_ feeling run through his spine as he felt Horst’s throat moving beneath his hand as he drank, or that Horst wasn’t being rough _at all_ in his ministrations, but then again –

Then again, Cabal realized, _he couldn’t give a damn_ , and maybe that thought shouldn’t have felt so liberating, but it _did_ , and he didn’t hold back the moan that had been fighting to leave his throat, and then for the first time in a long, _long_ while, he wasn’t really thinking anymore.

\--

“Do _not_ ,” he croaked later, “say a word about how _I_ taste.”

Horst snorted, his ankle hooking around Cabal’s with absolutely zero damns given about it.

“You’re no fun,” Horst said. “So, are you helping me with the fence tomorrow?”

“ _What_ – no! And the fence is at the bottom of the list of things that should be done around here –”

“But you wouldn’t want that poor postman to feel as unwelcome next time he brings us furniture, would you?”

Cabal, in truth, couldn’t care less for the damned postman bar ensuring that the garden wouldn’t eat him, thus causing a need for them to relocate all over again, but he was coming to terms with the fact that it seemed like he was apparently unable to just say _no_ when it came to Horst asking _that_ way.

“This is not about the damned postman, is it?”

“You always were too smart for your own good, weren’t you?”

“Whatever,” Cabal replied, and turned, moving his head on Horst’s shoulder, hoping that the conversation would be considered done and over.

If it felt right against all odds when Horst’s arm gripped tightly around his waist, he was entirely beyond giving a damn.

\--

The next morning, he found terribly cooked bacon and sausage on the other side of the empty bed.

He wasn’t at all surprised to find Horst _already_ working on the damned roof and cheerfully informing him that they could absolutely work on the fence in the afternoon.

He didn’t even try to say no.

After all, he thought, it wasn’t as if his clothes weren’t ruined already.

 

 **3.5: Step Three Point Five: Building Walls & Roof, Take Two** 

**(Including sub-steps such as: Connect The Ends of Each Rafter, Install The Exterior Siding and Exterior Features)**

 

Cabal hadn’t asked if it was a one-time thing, during the day.

He had his answer when after spending the forsaken day painting the bloody fence _orange_ (never mind that Horst had chosen a warm and soft shade of it, bordering towards a peach-tinted hue, which _did_ look entirely more welcoming than Cabal liked but that just about _felt_ like something his brother would greatly enjoy) he crawled under the blankets, having turned off the light, and not long later the door opened and Horst joined him, in the same bloody attire as the previous day and still smelling of paint and plaster.

“Should I go back outside?” He asked, a moment later.

“No,” Cabal said. He was too tired to dance the dance in which he pretended he didn’t care.

This time, he was waiting for it when he felt Horst’s mouth over his, and there was no biting going on, but there certainly was clothes shedding, but somehow, after the previous day, Horst’s hand gently but surely jerking him off as Horst’s cool skin soaked heat moment by moment felt almost ordinary, at least for their standards.

“Should I –” He asked quietly in the silence of the room, but then he could feel Horst shaking his head as he moved closer, his arms curling around his shoulders, and it shouldn’t have been the best sleep he could remember having in years, but it _was_.

\--

The next day, he left the door open. He didn’t know what to expect – it was sunny outside again during the day and there was nothing stopping Horst from his ridiculous sleeping habits – but after he laid down on the blankets, he wasn’t alone for long.

After the third time, he stopped questioning it or thinking that it was _not_ a semi-permanent arrangement, for the moment at least.

He should have felt disturbed at the thought, _maybe_ , but –

He was not.

\--

“What is _that_ ,” Cabal asked a week after they stated sharing the blanket.

Horst turned from the board he had been tinkering with, now proudly hanging on the empty cellar wall.

“I think it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“ _What is that_ , Horst?”

“Since _you_ are not answering the poor postman, I have for the last week, and, apparently, Miss Barrow and Zarenyia are thinking of us.”

Cabal _could_ see that – the board was covered in some ten postcards, the one from Vienna on the top left and then… Constantinople, Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Paris, Turin and Milan.

“ _How_ much are they traveling?”

“Trains are a marvelous thing, aren’t they? Anyway, I thought it would be a pity if they should get ruined or lost.”

“And so you just _put them on a board_?”

“Until I can find them a better place than the cellar,” he stated proudly. “Doesn’t it make the cellar look _cozy_?”

Cabal hadn’t known that he wanted _any_ room in his house to look _cozy_.

But, as Horst not so subtly moved behind him and put an arm around his shoulders, he had to admit it to himself all over again – it wasn’t just _his_ anymore, as if it had ever been, and he probably would have to resign himself to more of this nonsense, if anything because Horst _was_ indeed the person who’d have valued a _cozy_ house over a practical one.

Somehow, it didn’t seem like the worst deal he could make, but that board was still tacky as Hell – or at least, as the kind of hell their old non-Euclidean acquaintance Ragtag Slyboots would have enjoyed ruling – and the moment he could, he’d find a sober black one rather than that horrible wood painted in gold and red. There was a limit to everything and he drew it at his brother’s décor choices.

 

**Step Four: Starting On the Interior**

  **(Including sub-steps such as: Install Pipes and Waste Drains, Rough-in Electrical Outlets, Install Insulation, Install Your Ceilings)**

 

“Let me tell you, Cabal, I didn’t take you for an _orange fence_ kind of man,” Miss Barrow deadpanned, and Cabal couldn’t even tell her that she was mistaken, because _she was not_.

“It’s _his_ fault,” he merely shrugged as glared at Horst, who was perched on a ladder working on plastering the – thankfully done – first floor ceiling, but had stopped as he heard the knock on the door.

“Why would it be a _fault_?” He asked, moving entirely too fast next to them. “Orange is a perfectly fine color,” he said, and then _obviously_ he went on straight to kissing Miss Barrow’s hand. “Leonie, it’s delightful to see you again. Thank you for the postcards, they were greatly appreciated. And, is your traveling companion –”

“She said she would join us shortly. She has, uh, ran into a couple friends she called _interesting_ at the tavern, and –”

“I think I know enough,” Cabal said, figuring that the least he heard, the better.

“Yes, and what the hell have you two been doing anyway?” Miss Barrow asked. “I wasn’t expecting to come here and find a construction site out of everything. Well, a two-men and two-zombies one, I suppose.”

Cabal groaned, trying to get dust off his trousers without much success. “We came back to find that the house had been set on fire by two of Orfilia Ninuka’s agents. We did manage to save what was necessary, but sadly the house wasn’t to be recovered.”

“Does it have anything to do with your brother _standing shirtless in the sun_?”

“It has _entirely_ to do with that,” Horst cheerfully supplied. Cabal wanted to sigh. He did not. If his reputation survived this ordeal, he’d have been the first person to be utterly surprised.

“How so?” Miss Barrow asked, grinning, leaning on one of her valises, and for a moment her blonde hair and soft smiling mouth felt so _familiar_ and utterly alien at the same time that Cabal felt like someone stabbed him in the heart, and loathed the feeling as soon as it came upon him.

“The sun was about to rise when we arrived here,” Horst said. Cabal’s eyes were fixed on the white paint stuck under both their nails. Better _that_ than actually having to wade through this conversation. “And, I drank my phial. Johannes was correct in assuming it would turn me human again.”

“So you’re the same as you were –”

“Not quite,” he grinned, showing off his fangs for a moment.

“… What the hell,” Miss Barrow said.

“That’s what I hope to find out after we’re done here,” Cabal interrupted, hoping that the conversation would be dropped and knowing that Miss Barrow was eyeing the old white scarf tied around his throat, a garment _no one_ would think of wearing while painting a damned wall but that he wore just in case the postman showed up with the last delivery of whatever Horst needed for the upper floor so that he would _not_ noticed the two red dots on his neck.

“So wait, you are, uhm, _rebuilding the house from the ground up_?”

“ _His_ idea,” Cabal shrugged, moving his glasses back over the bridge of his nose. “I had favors to call in.”

“And I wasn’t going to let you,” Horst kept on. “Anyway, what’s wrong with it? I think we’ve done a splendid job. Well, fine, _I_ mostly did, but Johannes is excellent at painting walls.”

“Wait, _you_ built this entire thing?” Miss Barrow asked, sounding awed. Of course she would.

“He designed the blueprints and I did most of the rest,” Horst said. “Teamwork, right?”

“Well, that’s impressive,” Miss Barrow said. “And, do you need any help?”

“Excuse me?” Cabal asked, _not_ having expected that. Miss Barrow merely sighed and turned her eyes on _him_.

“My father built the house you so nicely convinced me to leave pretty much on his own. Well, him and the friend who owned the construction company, of course. And I helped him when he did renovation work on it. Do you think he hasn’t taught me anything?”

“Well,” Horst said, sounding entirely too happy about the prospect, “has he taught you anything when it comes to slating? Because that’s about the one thing I’m not too sure about.”

“Oh,” Miss Barrow replied, and Cabal didn’t know if he liked her grin or not, “he might have. Don’t you have another floor to go before worrying about shingles, though?”

“Don’t _we_?” Horst asked, _winking_.

She winked back.

Cabal didn’t know if he enjoyed this development or dreaded it.

“By the way,” Miss Barrow asked, “you don’t have any furniture or what?”

“Not yet,” Cabal supplied, feeling like he _should_ say something. “Horst wanted the first and second floor done, at least.”

“And where are you sleeping? I hope not in the open.”

“In the cellar,” Horst said. “But Leonie is right, we should worry about beds.”

“When we have _somewhere_ to put them,” Cabal sighed. “Also, since where are the two of you this friendly?”

“Since we were stuck in a parallel London together,” Miss Barrow sighed. “Very well. Horst, what was it that you were doing just now?”

“Plastering the ceiling here, but admittedly I should move on to the beams on the second floor and work on the pipes for the bathroom.”

“Can I change somewhere?”

“Well, the cellar. Or the shed, I suppose, but it’s not ideal. We stuck all the building materials in there.”

“Fine, the cellar it is. Go ahead to the second floor, I’ll worry about the plaster.”

“Johannes, how could you ever think of making her sell her soul?” Horst laughed, and bowed slightly before disappearing out of the door and – somewhere over their heads.

“I didn’t have mine!” Cabal shouted after him, not that it would mean anything. “Never mind,” he said. “Miss Barrow, thank you for your offer, but if you would rather go back home –”

“I volunteered, didn’t I? Just tell me where the bloody cellar is.”

Cabal did, and he watched her head downstairs, bringing her valises with.

Just _then_ he remembered about the postcards hanging over the cellar’s wall.

 _Embarrassment_ never was something most necromancers were famous for dying of, but Cabal thought that he was strongly risking being the first in that line of work.

\--

“Let me guess,” Miss Barrow said as she came upstairs dressed in a pair of old trousers and flannel shirt that must have belonged to her father, “the board with the postcards was your brother’s idea.”

“I am flattered you didn’t consider that it might not have been,” Cabal replied, wishing to never ever smell paint for the rest of his life, however long it turned out to be.

“I hadn’t figured _you_ would have thought of doing something _nice_ with those postcards, but I see that he’s being a good influence.”

“I – I beg your pardon?”

“As if when we met the first time you would have tolerated a _board with postcards_ hanging from a wall anywhere in your house, Cabal. So, would you consider learning how to plaster a ceiling?”

“I think I will stick with painting.”

“Your loss,” she said, with a certain gloating tone to her voice, and grabbed whatever tool Horst had been using just then before climbing on the ladder.

He went back to painting the damned wall.

Good thing that he still had a lot of leftover carnival money, because given that they still had to cover the floor properly, he had a feeling they were nowhere near done.

\--

“Leonie,” Horst told her later, “your work is astonishing. Do you think you might help me with the bathroom pipes tomorrow morning?”

“I should be delighted,” she said, wiping her hands on her old trousers. “By the way, don’t you wear _anything_ while working?”

“Why should I? The sun is out, it’s warm enough, there’s no reason.”

“… I don’t know, maybe some of _those_ materials might be toxic?”

“See,” Cabal told him, “I _did_ tell you that it was a bad idea.”

“Shouldn’t I have gotten at least a chill until this moment if I was a _normal_ person?” Horst asked.

“Fine, _maybe_ , but –”

“Then I think I’ll be fine without. I mean, it’s not as if we can spare clothes.”

“Wait a moment,” Miss Barrow said, “you’re telling me that you only have whatever you brought with while looking for the Five Paths because everything else burned up in flames?”

“Well, yes?” Horst shrugged.

“ _Men_ ,” she sighed. “Fine, never mind that. I will take a trip to the village and possibly sleep at the inn. Is there anything you need, Horst?”

“I suppose some more nails wouldn’t hurt?”

“Fair enough,” she said. “I will see you both tomorrow. You _will_ be so nice to keep my luggage in the cellar, won’t you?”

She left before Cabal could answer what was obviously a rhetorical question.

For a moment, he wondered _how_ did they go from him trying to trick her into selling her soul to _this_ , and then he decided that he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He supposes the same way he went from running from that crypt to voluntarily baring his neck.

\--

“I think she’s suspecting something.”

“How so?”

“She was staring at that scarf earlier, Horst.”

“Well, it _is_ kind of telling that you’d wear a scarf inside the house.”

“Well, doesn’t that worry you any?”

“Why should it? She’s coming back. If she’s suspecting and she’s said nothing, then she obviously doesn’t mind. And do I have to remind you that she’s just spent a month or so traveling around with _your_ friend Zarenyia, who _certainly_ had no problems implying that the two of us were doing exactly what we’re doing right now?”

 _That_ , Cabal had to admit, was a fair point.

A _very_ fair point.

\--

Miss Barrow did indeed show up the next morning, along with the same postman. Cabal wasn’t _that_ surprised at seeing him tentatively say hi to his garden, nor at the garden replying – he figured that at this point they might be acquainted.

The postman was driving his usual van and dumped at the shed what looked like an unholy number of pipes and electrical equipment, and _then_ –

“Miss Barrow,” Cabal told her, “the cot was –”

“Unnecessary? Excuse me, I _do_ have to sleep somewhere. Oh, and this is for you,” she said, dumping a large duffel bag straight into his arms.

“What –”

“You and your brother might need _that_. It’s emergency clothing,” she laughed, and then headed back inside calling for Horst and asking him if he needed any help with the plumbing.

Cabal opened the bag and found that it did indeed have a couple of changes of clothes for each of them inside it, along with a pair of pajamas.

“Miss Barrow,” he says, barging inside the freshly painted entrance, “I certainly won’t have you pay for –”

“Oh, calm down, Horst told me where you keep the carnival money. I used _your_ money, not mine. Are you sure you don’t want to learn some plumbing skills?”

“… I am content with _my_ specific set of skill,” he said, not expecting _that_.

“Your loss still,” she said, shrugging, and went back outside, headed for the ladder bringing to the second floor, and hoisting herself from the window.

\--

He honestly had no idea of what he should have expected that evening.

He _knew_ for sure that Miss Barrow must have noticed the red signs on his neck, because he _wasn’t_ wearing a scarf this morning, nor the previous day. He _did_ expect the cot to be opened in the corner of the room, and therefore he expected Miss Barrow to sleep on it, and so he supposed that Horst would sleep somewhere else, and the thought shouldn’t have made him feel _disappointed_ , but never mind that.

He survived on his own for _years_ with just one goal to sustain him, he surely wouldn’t have a problem _not sharing a damned blanket_.

That is, until Miss Barrow did indeed take the cot and Horst followed her, and then proceeded to join him under the covers.

_Was zur Hölle…_

He didn’t know if he should ask anything or not.

Then –

“Cabal, I can _hear_ you thinking,” Miss Barrow said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I spent a _sizeable_ amount of time with Zarenyia. I _died_ and came back to life. And I’ve seen the two of you. I’m fairly beyond giving a bloody damn whatever it is that you’re doing. Just don’t wake me up.”

Cabal heard her turning on her side and obviously given them her back.

“ _Seriously_?” He whispered.

“You heard the lady,” Horst whispered back, and while they didn’t do _anything_ that would have gotten the vice squad to arrest them, not that this damned village even has enough police to put one together, Cabal spent a long time wondering what in Satan’s name had his life turned into before finally falling asleep.

\--

He _did_ , regrettably, spend the entire next day looking at _pavement materials catalogues_ , which Horst had dumped on him saying that since there weren’t any walls left that he could paint before they were done with the plumbing and electricity on the second floor, so he might as well pick what they were supposed to walk on.

After considering the state of his finances (still pretty good) and the prices of the listed materials, he chose some solid limestone for the kitchen and bathrooms and wooden floorboards for the rest of the house, and at that point Horst dumped on him a catalogue for _windows_ and another one for _curtains_ with instructions to pick wisely for _the entire damned house_.

By the time he figured it was due to cook some dinner, he had picked curtains for some ten rooms, an amount of windows he hadn’t known would be needed, and he asked himself for a long time _why_ did people think that curtains for the kitchen had to be different from curtains for a bedroom, but never mind that. He chose all of them in sober, _sober_ white, gray or black, figuring that at least he wouldn’t be matching that blasted orange fence, and then went to prepare some food while Horst mailed the order.

He did not expect Miss Barrow to actually compliment him on his average cooking skills, but he gave that not much thought, until it was time to turn in – apparently, the next day Horst and Miss Barrow would be done with the necessities on the first floor and would move up to the second.

“Are you sure that cot is comfortable?” Horst asked her as soon as the three of them were locked inside the cellar. “It doesn’t look like it.”

“Horst, you’re sleeping on the _ground_.”

“And you’re pretty much sleeping on the bedstead,” he replied.

“Horst, is this conversation leading anywhere?” Cabal asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I was merely wondering if the lady would wish to join us.”

For a moment, no one said a thing.

Cabal wanted to ask Horst to repeat it just in case he hadn’t understood, but then –

“Horst, did you ask what I thought you just asked?” Miss Barrow inquired.

“I did,” he said. “I thought you made it fairly obvious you were interested.”

“ _What_ ,” both Cabal and Miss Barrow said at the same time.

“I see you both proving my point,” Horst went on, looking entirely too satisfied with himself.

“Proving _what_ point,” Cabal finally said, trying to sound as non-impressed as he could.

“Johannes, honestly, when trying to recruit her to help us you went there with _flowers and wine_ for her, which is honestly _not_ what you show up with if you just want professional help, and you actually _did_ show some feelings when it came to _her_ when you didn’t have a soul, or did you think I forgot it? And as far as _you_ are concerned, Leonie, I just have to say, you _did_ come with us, didn’t you?”

“… That’s a fair point,” she conceded.

“ _And_ ,” Horst said, “you and I had a mostly agreeable time with each other back when I was your sidekick, didn’t we?”

“That’s fair, too.”

“So that’s my entire point. Johannes _does_ want it, even if he most likely hasn’t let himself consider the possibility, _you_ certainly aren’t against it and, I might say, might have thought about it a few times, and you both do enjoy my presence at least, and of course the reverse is valid. Leonie obviously does not have as many reserves as one could have to our present arrangement, or she wouldn’t have so eloquently said as much yesterday. So, _why not_?”

Johannes Cabal, in that moment, was entirely horrified to find out that Horst was right, as much as he wished he could not, and as he dared look at Miss Barrow he could see that she was coming to the exact same conclusion, and that was why he decided that the best course of action was postponing the answer.

“Horst, is this _possibly_ a demonstration of how you ended up in a bed with that lacrosse team?”

“He did _what_ ,” Miss Barrow said.

“Well,” Horst admitted, “you _do_ need to have some convincing skills in order to get twelve people in bed with you at once, so I suppose it might be. Anyway, what I haven’t heard until now was either of you saying no to my entirely sensible proposal.”

… Why couldn’t he find anything to object to _that_ , either?

Ah, right, because it was sadly true, and not just for _him_.

He looked at Miss Barrow again, not trying to quench _whatever_ longing he felt whenever looking at her as he had until that point, if anything because denying it would have been ridiculous, and again he felt pained at noticing how she looked nothing alike _her_ while sharing the hair and eye color and the softness of the lines on her face.

Good thing that the way she looked at Cabal was _entirely_ different from what he remembered, and wasn’t it sad that after almost ten years he _had_ to tell himself that he remembered right?

He had no idea of what _she_ saw, especially because he had no idea of how _he_ felt in the first place, but then her mouth curled in a resigned smile and she inched closer.

“Was he always like this?” She asked then.

“I’m sorry, _how_?”

“I mean, was he always this insufferable when he knew he had the right of something?”

He _almost_ laughed at that.

Almost.

“What if I told you that he was?”

“I’m _not_ insufferable,” Horst muttered, but neither of them paid that any mind.

“It wouldn’t change that he has the right of it, I think. As far as I am concerned, anyway. Does he, as far as _you_ are concerned?”

“What if he did?” He finally admitted, feeling like saying it would about make him drop dead.

Then again, could it be a betrayal, when he was – already doing _that_ with Horst, anyway, and when who knew how long it would take to find an alternative to the Five Paths?

( _Unless Zarenyia still has hers,_ a little voice told him, but the fact that Miss Barrow hadn’t mentioned it when hearing that _his_ phial had gone to Horst made him assume Zarenyia most likely did _not_ still have it.)

“Then,” she said, “I guess it’s high time you stop calling me Miss Barrow. I draw the line at _that_ if I’m sharing someone’s bed.”

“Look at that,” Horst said, “told you, I was right. You’re welcome, the both of you. I’ll go find some more blankets.”

“Wait –” Cabal started, but he had already fled the room.

 _Verdammt_ –

“Let him go,” Miss Barrow, no, _Leonie_ said. “He probably wants us to sort ourselves out without him buffering. He probably has the right of it, too.”

He was about to say something about Horst most probably enjoying his suffering on some level, but that would have been unfair.

If anything, because he _knew_ that whenever Horst did anything that caused him suffering, he wasn’t enjoying a moment of it.

“So – should we, uhm –”

“Cabal – or should I say, _Johannes_ –, I see you learned nothing from that time on the airship, didn’t you?”

“I –”

“Bugger this,” she said, and then her mouth was on his and she was a lot rougher than he’d have imagined, and there was a certain urgency to it that would have knocked him down on the ground had he been standing, and he kissed back because how could he _not_ , not when he had been spending entirely too long telling himself he _didn’t_ want her that way, and he wasn’t surprised for one moment that she ended up on top of him and didn’t let him take charge of the kiss for a split second, and he didn’t know how long it went on but it was enough that they moved apart when he heard his brother whistle from the other side of the room.

“So,” he said, dropping a sixth blanket he found who knew where into the pile, “I suppose this is the time where you thank me for making the both of you get over yourselves, but since I’m not the kind of person who gloats when it turns out they’re right, how about we just ignore that bit and move on to more pleasurable things?”

“Fine,” Leonie said, her hand grabbing at Horst’s wrist, “but you aren’t biting me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s _his_ thing, after all,” he replied before leaning down and giving her a kiss worthy of a bloody movie, the show-off, and fact was, he couldn’t even be jealous because the sight was undoubtedly a turn-on of the sort he would have ran away from _before_ because he wouldn’t have ever considered such a distraction to be part of his life, but –

“Johannes, would you just _stop_ thinking everything through already and join us?”

And –

Did he say, already, that these days he was apparently unable to deny Horst anything, when he asked? Well, he apparently _was_ , and it seemed like he wasn’t that good at denying Miss Barrow – no, Leonie – either, and so he stopped, and he did, and by the time the three of them were effectively sharing the blankets

(with _him_ in the damned middle)

he couldn’t even remember why he was thinking it was a bad idea, just before.

 

**Step Five: Installing the Essentials**

**(Including sub-steps such as: Installing Plumbing Fixtures, Paneling the Walls, Installing Wall Coverings and Installing Appliances)**

  

All things considered, Cabal decided, he _was_ going to stick to painting.

If anything because Horst’s trust that installing wooden floorboards was easy and something _he_ could have done without a problem wasn’t, in Cabal’s opinion, very well placed. His brother might be good at convincing people that they should bed him and share that bed with other people, but he most certainly overestimated Cabal’s skills when it came to _this_ kind of manual work.

Half a morning and he barely managed to finish _one_ room. On the ground floor.

This while he could definitely hear Horst and Leonie tinkering around the second floor, and after he had to answer the bloody postman, who at this point was definitely on friendly terms with his garden.

He glanced at the _four_ postcards Zarenyia sent from London and Cambridge – he was entirely sure he did _not_ want to know what Zarenyia was doing in _Cambridge_ of all places – and considered hiding them, then he went downstairs and hung them on the board, feeling ridiculous for the entire length of time it took him, and then decided that at least the sitting room’s floor looked professionally put together, even if it took him _the entire damned morning_ to do it and his arms were starting to hurt.

Almost two months, he thought. Two months he could have used to do – _anything else_ and possibly getting started on his research again, because there _had_ to be that sixth phial somewhere and he _would_ find it, but –

Never mind. The previous five had waited until then, the sixth will have to wait a bit longer.

He glared at the board, wondering if any of Horst’s dumb catalogues might have a suitable more aesthetically pleasing replacement, and went back upstairs.

Maybe he’d manage to at least finish placing the floorboards the hallway.

\--

He _did_ finish the hallway.

Then he had to spend dinner going over Horst’s new _lamps_ catalogue.

“Do you keep this hidden somewhere?” Cabal asked, groaning. “I mean, _how_ do you always have a new one?”

“That’s because I ordered them all when we started, but there was not much sense in bringing them out when we were still designing the place, right? And anyway, since I know you would _not_ appreciate my taste in décor and I don’t want to live with you perpetually complaining about how ugly the furniture looks you might as well pick them.”

Cabal _wanted_ to protest.

Then he realized that no, it was a perfectly valid point and that it was true that he _would_ have done that.

“That said,” Leonie added, “don’t pick anything too complicated to hang, since _we_ are both doing it and not you.”

He sighed and went back to the bloody lamp catalogue.

He was suddenly growing a more than grudging respect for anyone who actually did these godforsaken things as a _job_ full-time.

\--

A week later, he was done painting the stairs in all three floors. Horst and Leonie hadn’t left the attic for the entire day, telling him that they were just going to pull an all-nighter to finish placing the shingles and be at least done with the bulk of the place so that from then on they could focus on the details and then they could _finally_ get furniture.

Good, because having upgraded from blankets on the ground to blankets _on a mattress_ on the ground wasn’t helping too much in the long run.

Actually, while Cabal was _not_ keen on wasting money on useless things, he thought he might pick a _good_ bed from Horst’s umpteenth catalogue if anything because he had missed sleeping on one for so long that he felt physical longing just _looking_ at the damned furniture on the glossy pages.

 _I stared down Satan and now I get pangs of longing looking at damned beds. Where did I go wrong_ , he asked himself, and then went to sleep without anyone on either side of him and for a long moment, before he passed out, it felt somehow very, very wrong.

\--

He was still alone when he woke up the next day.

He stared at the hidden laboratory’s door, not even daring to open it – _not now, it’s not the time, and it would just torment me further_ – and then he went up the stairs after changing in his already ruined clothes. He couldn’t wait for this business to be over so he could burn the damned things and the dried paint forever encrusted in their folds.

Then –

“Johannes!”

Well, Horst _could_ scream if he heard him three floors below.

“Yes?” He called back.

“Come upstairs!”

He would have rather made himself some tea, but fine, it could wait for later. Cabal went up the stairs, noticing that it was still early – the sun was rising, but hadn’t done so completely. He dragged himself up to the fourth floor, yesterday’s pavement work having pulled a number on his muscles that apparently not even Nyarlathotep’s tricks could, until he saw Horst perching at the top of the stairs.

Of course, _not wearing his damned shirt_ , never mind that he really was filthy with dust.

“Oh, here you are. You woke up at the _best_ time.”

“What, sunrise?”

“Indeed. Especially to see the improvements Leonie and I took the liberty to make.”

“ _Improvements_? Horst, I hardly needed –”

“Just get in,” Horst said, letting him walk inside the attic, and –

He barely noticed Leonie cleaning her hands with a rag, if only because he had designed the place exactly how it was before. As in, with large enough windows on the walls and a regular roof.

Instead – instead, they had done away with most of the old roof and installed large windows on it rather than covering it in shingles, placing the openings to install the lamps on the wall rather than hanging on the ceiling. Like this, the attic looked somehow bigger, but –

But he understood what Horst meant with _the best time_ , because with the sun just rising the entire room was bathed in soft orange and warm pink light, and while Cabal held no fondness for either color he couldn’t _not_ admit to himself that it was a gorgeous sight, and as he thought about doing his work _here_ and not in the basement he decided he _liked_ the idea very, very much.

“So,” Horst said, “that’s _a lot_ better than it was before, isn’t it?”

He considered stalling, then he decided that it wasn’t really worth it. “Yes,” he admitted. “It is. But – will it hold?”

“Oh, William paid me a favor and had his cousin take another look at it.”

“Who’s William and who is _his cousin_?”

“The postman,” Leonie said, “and the cousin is the guy I’m told approved your plans the first time. The civil engineer in the next town over.”

“Are we on a first name basis with the postman?”

“The garden is, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have been.”

“Anyway,” Leonie said, moving to his other side, her hand clapping _quite_ hard behind Cabal’s back, “all yours. You can paint the walls to your best capacity while we work on the other pavements.”

“But wasn’t I supposed –”

“Johannes, pavements are not your strong suit. But in a short while we should move on to the décor part of this entire thing and I’m sure you _will_ enjoy that, won’t you?”

Cabal wouldn’t go as far as saying that he’d _enjoy_ it, but it certainly would beat anything requiring the ruin of his poor clothes.

“Of course I will,” he agreed, “and I suppose I won’t hate painting the walls _too_ much.”

“Isn’t that character development,” Leonie said, sounding endlessly amused, and Cabal wondered how much faster his heart started beating as her fingers gently squeezed his, never mind that Horst’s hand had gone to the back of his neck, gently pressing his fingers over the almost healed marks on his neck.

Right. It’s been a week or so, hasn’t it?

Three years ago, he wouldn’t have bared his neck, and three years ago a tableau in which Leonie stood behind him with a hand around his waist and one working his trousers open while Horst gently bit down on his neck _again_ as the sun left the horizon line.

Three years ago, he decided, he thought he knew everything, and now he was amply sure he did _not_ , and it didn’t feel as daunting as it might have to admit it to himself.

 

**Step Six: Decorating Your Home**

**(Including sub-steps such as: Trying Out New Furniture, Using Decorative Storage and Refurbishing Old Furniture)**

 

Fact was: Cabal _did_ expect Zarenyia to show up – he had been amply warned and honestly, he didn’t know why she hadn’t _earlier_ given that Leonie had said she would join them shortly.

Then again, he had figured, the _five_ young friends she had made, or so she said, must have brought her around London, Cambridge, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Woodstock, since they got postcards from _all_ the listed cities.

So, it was no surprise to anyone that she showed up, nor that she showed up with an amount of luggage that would have probably taken the whole shed on its own.

What surprised him was, firstly, that she showed up with _Miss Smith_ in tow, a Miss Smith who looked entirely corporeal and absolutely not dead, to Cabal’s relief. At least his hypothesis was confirmed. Secondly, what surprised him was that Miss Smith _also_ was bringing with an inane quantity of luggage, and Cabal had not pegged her for that kind of person.

“But _look at that_ ,” Zarenyia said as soon as she walked in and noticed the infamous board, which Horst had sadly decided to hang in the hallway rather than keep in the cellar, and _at least_ Cabal had won out when it came to switching the red and gold board for a more sober one –, “how _darling_ of you to keep our cards. And _all_ of them! Johannes, who knew you were so sentimental?”

“Actually it was Horst’s idea –”

“Yes, and it’s hanging on _your_ wall,” she said, not sounding impressed at all with his excuse. “How _darling_ , indeed.”

“I’m more worried about the fence,” Miss Smith said, dumping what looked like an extra heavy valise on the ground. “I didn’t know orange was your color, Cabal.”

He groaned. “Actually, the fence _also_ was Horst’s idea. He thought it would feel more _welcoming_.”

“Why, doesn’t it?” Horst said, walking in from the sitting room where he had been attaching the wallpaper. “But look at that. Miss Smith, lovely to see you in the flesh,” he said, kissing her hand, and then he shrugged and di the same with Zarenyia, because _of course_ he had to, didn’t he?

“Well, it _does_ look welcoming,” Miss Smith admitted. “I should have figured it was _your_ idea.”

“Uhm, not to pry,” Cabal asked, “but how are you two together?”

“Oh, wasn’t it the _loveliest_ story?” Zarenyia clapped her hands in a frankly disturbing fashion, if you knew where she came from. “So, as Leonie _might_ have told you, I met these five lovely boys in the tavern, Cambridge students, you see –”

“I hope they’re still alive!” Leonie called from the kitchen, where she was stuck seemingly installing the faucet in the sink.

“Of course they are, why would I have _killed_ them? No point in doing it with such _fun_ people. So, they showed me around.”

“I noticed,” Cabal said, “or I suppose I wouldn’t have gotten those cards.”

“Such a smart human, aren’t you, Johannes? However, then they introduced me to their friends, who had friends in Oxford, who had friends in London, who had friends – well, you understand, but I was staying with them, and I made sure Leonie knew the address so she could inform me of what was going on here. By the way, this isn’t half bad for two people and a half working on it.”

“Wait, you two were _writing each other_?”

“Sure we did. We’re totally friends now, aren’t we?”

“Is this the evening where you only ask rhetorical questions?” Leonie shouted from the next room.

“How _delightful_. So, I was about to come back here after worrying about a few things, and imagine how happy I was to run into Miss Smith in the local pub!”

Miss Smith shrugged. “Hey, I just came back to life. I wanted to celebrate.”

“By going to the pub?” Cabal asked.

“By going to _every_ pub in the area.”

“And then we saw each other again and we had a _grand_ time, not to brag –”

Cabal _could_ imagine what great time they had, especially because Miss Smith’s pale face suddenly turned an interesting shade of cherry pink.

“And since we wouldn’t have met if not for _you_ , Johannes, and Leonie _did_ inform me that you finally got over yourself –”

“I _got over myself_?”

“Well, what did I ask you first when you summoned me to go on that charming adventure, darling?”

Cabal tried to remember it – this was too much damned information at once.

 

_“I say, are you and she lovers?”_

_“How about him, then? Are you and he lovers?”_

_“Hardly, madam. That’s my brother.”_

_“And?”_

 

Right.

_And._

“Uhm, you did inquire after my, sentimental situation.”

“And what about your _sentimental situation_ right now?”

“… It seems to be exactly what _you_ had predicted it to be?” Cabal admitted, a certain hint of pain to his voice.

“Oh, don’t look so sullen. No one should be when discussing such things. Anyway, it would have just been rude to show up without some housewarming gift, and Leonie _did_ inform us that you seem to lack in clothes?” Her voice was a whole new level of syrup-sweet as she grabbed Miss Smith’s heavy valise without an effort and opened it with a flourish.

Johannes Cabal was _not_ , somehow, surprised to see an ungodly amount of black and white _angora sweaters_ all carefully folded inside the valise.

Zarenyia did the same with one of the other valises, uncovering an equal ungodly amount of the unsettling soft and fluffy things, except in purple, black, gray and a lone orange one.

“These,” she said with a sweet smile that promised murder if he dared refuse the things, “are for you.” She handed Cabal a pair from the black and white stack. “I assumed they would fit more with your fashion, albeit they are a bit dull. However, they’re so _soft_ – you don’t even know what you’re missing by wearing those lousy waistcoats, which is why I made sure you _wouldn’t_ miss on it. Meanwhile…” She grabbed a purple one from the other stack and carefully handed it to Horst. “Since _you_ at least seem to wear something other than black and white, good thing that because _one_ of you two should have a sense of fashion, we figured you would appreciate these most. Though I suppose wearing them before you’re done with your work might ruin them, and it’s _really_ good angora, so you’re dispensed for the moment.”

“Too bad,” Horst said, “they _do_ feel very comfortable. Well then, I guess I have reasons to be done sooner.”

“Darling, there’s also no hurry. I mean, if _that_ is how you like to walk around these days, I’m sure I can stand the sight,” Zarenyia said sweetly, openly ogling at Horst’s chest, not that Cabal couldn’t understand her, as much as he wished he wouldn’t. “You two don’t mind if I take a look, right dears? If you do –”

“Zarenyia, we _shared_ the wagon-lit on the Orient-Express,” Leonie said, walking inside the room after most probably throwing the wrench she had been holding somewhere inside the sink, from the noise it made, “do you think I _mind_ if you take a look?”

“I see I did teach you well,” Zarenyia went on, absolutely delighted. “Anyhow, there are trousers and various other amenities under the sweaters, so you won’t need for clothes.”

“Thank you,” Horst said, _meaning_ it. “I can’t wear to try them on. As in, when I’m done with the second-floor bathroom, I suppose. But Johannes, you _don’t_ have to do anything that might ruin your clothes, you know that?”

“Well,” Leonie said, “that’s a point. And you’ve been complaining about your paint-ruined clothes since – since I was _here_ , just go and change.”

Cabal desperately wanted to refuse, because _angora_ was not anything he ever wished to wear – he had a dignity, damn it – but in between _them_ , a former princess of Hell staring down at him and Miss Smith sending him a sympathetic look that was pretty much suggesting him to go along with it if he wanted to live, he realized he had no choice. So he shrugged and rustled around the suitcase – he grabbed one of the black sweaters, then a white plain shirt from somewhere beneath it, a pair of trousers and – what, _underwear_ , he’d never live that down – plus a new pair of socks, and then disappeared in the basement.

He got out of his paint-ruined trousers and shirt and slipped on the pitch-black trousers which, surprisingly, fit him perfectly. He decided he didn’t want to know how exactly Zarenyia had guessed his measures, especially because he suspected it well enough, and put on the equally fitting shirt. The sweater was so soft he felt like it would melt under his fingers as he pulled it on, and that also fit him perfectly, even if he felt bloody ridiculous.

_Angora._

He shook his head, glad that at least Zarenyia hadn’t thought to give him something _red_ or equally tacky (given that she had shown up with a similar outfit except in bordeaux, he wouldn’t have put it past her) and he went back upstairs.

“ _Darling_ ,” she said as soon as he showed up, “you look astonishing. Too bad that I suppose four of us would be too much, wouldn’t it?”

He almost choked on his reply, but then Zarenyia shook his head and put an arm around Miss Smith’s waist. “Don’t you worry, _we_ certainly will make up for anything we might lose by not crowding the three of you. So,” she said, turning towards Leonie, “can I help you?”

Leonie shrugged. “Actually, yes. Horst’s strength isn’t what it used to be and the cottage is stacked full with furniture to bring upstairs, would you mind terribly…?”

“Of course I would not,” she said. “And I can finally stretch my legs again, how delightful. Oh, by the way, Johannes, I _must_ thank you for our little adventure.”

“Uhm, how exactly?”

“That phial? I drank it.”

 _Well, here goes that option_ , Cabal thought sadly. “You don’t look very much changed,” he said.

“It got rid of the fine print!”

“The… _fine print_?”

“Why, as you can see I’m exactly the same as before, but now I only kill people I bed if I _specifically want to_ and in other cases, I do not. Which is a good thing for everyone involved, first of all my friends from Cambridge, I suppose. Miss Smith, would you like to lend me a hand?”

“Sure,” Miss Smith replied, entirely not phased.

“Well,” Horst said, “say what you want about her, she has taste.”

“She has _taste_ ,” Cabal parroted.

“That looks _really_ good on you, Johannes. I’d feel incredibly bad having to take it off you.”

“He means it’d be a good idea if you _already_ provided yourself,” Leonie added. “And after agreeing with him, I’m going back to the kitchen sink again. If you want to stand there and look pretty no one is going to complain.”

“I don’t think I am the one who looks _pretty_ in this –”

“Johannes, did you _just_ call me pretty? Now that’s _really_ adorable,” Horst said before flashing him another grin and disappearing upstairs.

 _I stared down Satan_ , Cabal thought, _I can live through this madness._

Or at least so he hoped.

\--

It was most probably no surprise that Fräulein Bartos rejoined them a few days later, as they worked on the finishing touches – as in, the bloody curtains, which were _technically_ all black and white, except for the fact that all the ones intended for the first floor were orange instead because of course Horst changed the order, with the excuse that _something_ had to call back to the fence’s tint and anyway a splash of color never hurt anyone, did it?

Cabal was just happy that the ones for the attic were _white_. Blissful, sober white.

“Huh,” she told Horst, after introducing herself to the other three women, “I should have realized at once it was _you_ behind the orange fence.”

“How so?”

“Your brother seems to despise anything beyond the realm of cold colors, at _most_ , never mind that given that garden of his I think he despises the concept of _welcoming_ people.”

Cabal suddenly decided that he liked her. He _really_ liked her. At least someone was understanding his plight here, never mind that she obviously wasn’t here to seek out _his_ company.

Not that he looked forward to having a conversation with her about _the arrangement_ , except that –

“Then again,” she said, “I suppose that the fact that _he_ would actually like orange curtains is one of the reason _we_ like him, isn’t it?”

She was looking at _him_ at that point. Straight in the face, not even pretending she didn’t know what she was talking about it.

“I think we do,” he said.

“Hm,” she replied, eyeing him. “Well, you did prove yourself useful, you _did_ bring me back to life and you obviously did solve that weird tension.”

“We had a weird tension?”

“… Let’s not even go there,” she said. “Anyhow, you _did_ see me naked already. I suppose that solves a lot of things.”

“Fräulein –”

“I think,” she said, “that if we should share like the adults that we all _most definitely are_ , never mind that you _did_ resurrect me, I suppose it’s Alisha to you.”

“Then – then it’s Johannes to you, if you’re –”

“I _died and came back to life_ while trying to stop a supernatural conspiracy and I _did_ like your brother when he couldn’t even walk in the sun, and you just introduced me to a _princess of Hell_ who about propositioned me to spend the night with her and a bonafide witch five minutes after we shook hands. At this point, _nothing_ is weird to me. And I could also do worse than your blonde girlfriend, if she agrees to share as well.”

Cabal could see Horst trying not to double up in laughter behind her.

“Well,” he admitted, “I have a feeling she and Zarenyia _did_ have a thing, while they were traveling together. I doubt she’d find a problem with you.”

“Well, then I can go help her assemble the wardrobe, she seemed to need some.”

He wished he could have _not_ have watched as she and Horst locked lips just before she left the room, headed straight for the one above them.

Except that he did and he couldn’t find it in himself to feel guilty about it for one split second.

\--

“Well, _I’ll be damned_ if it didn’t come out well,” Zarenyia said, before laughing at her own pun.

Horst was the only one who followed, not that Cabal had any doubts.

“I have to say,” Horst wheezed, “all that soot really didn’t pay it any favors. The white suits it a lot more.”

“Nothing to say,” Leonie added, her lips curled in a smirk Cabal was – worryingly – learning to _like_ , damn it, “as much as you’re useless at anything else when it comes to building houses, you _do_ paint them well.”

“I am flattered,” he said with a tone so dry it could have rivaled the Sahara, or so was the intention behind it anyway.

“Well,” Miss Smith shrugged, “if necromancy doesn’t pay off, at least your brother has a new career in front of him. I suppose you could help.”

“Why, thanks, but I’d like to enjoy sleeping on a proper bed now, if it’s all the same to you,” Horst laughed, and it was obvious that almost two months set at that specific task _did_ give him a decent enough tan.

Cabal felt horrible for not remembering whether Horst _did_ tan before they walked down into that bloody crypt and then he had to admit that it _did_ suit him, and at that point he didn’t even feel horrible anymore.

“All things considered the orange doesn’t look that terrible,” Fräulein Bartos, no, _Alisha_ , said appreciatively. “So, no party to celebrate?”

“Who do you take me for?” Zarenyia asked. “We absolutely should go.”

“Madam,” Cabal objected, “I am hardly the most welcomed person in town, you do know that?”

“True, but you’d be with _me_ , darling. Wanna bet that no one would care?”

 _No_ , Cabal thought, _I wouldn’t_ , because she was right.

As everyone else cheered and agreed, he turned to look at the house again. Three floors and the attic, the white walls gleaming in the pale sunlight, no dirt sullying it anymore, the roof with the windows and a few dark red shingles rather than the old dark ones he used to have, the black and white curtains interrupted just by the splash of orange on the first floor – it _did_ look good. It _did_ look like somewhere he could live in, but –

No.

The previous one, was something _he_ could live in.

This one –

This one was somewhere he couldn’t even imagine living in alone, but with _others_ , yes, and while he was sure that everyone but Horst would come and go – he doubted that someone who belonged to a network of spies nor Leonie nor a _princess of Hell_ nor a witch with a business to run would want to stay there permanently – he also had a feeling they’d come back, and damn it all –

Damn it all, he actually _liked the thought_.

 _Mein Gott_ , he thought, _not only I have a conscience, I might actually not hate it_.

The thought was, strangely, not too jarring.

 

 **Step Seven: The Finishing Touches**  

**(Including sub-steps such as: Hanging Up Artwork, Adding Your Favorite Pictures and Memories and Hang Up New Curtains)**

 

He stood in front of the secret door in the cellar. He didn’t need to open it – he had checked first thing after they could access the basement months ago, and nothing was ruined or out of place.

He put a hand on the wall and sighed deeply – it was almost dawn, and he should have been out already, they couldn’t postpone the trip anymore, but he hadn’t been down here in a while and he felt like he had to _tell her_ , even if she certainly wasn’t hearing.

“You know,” he whispered, “I keep on thinking about what Nyarlathotep showed me back in the Dreamlands. That – that future in which I found out how to bring you back but it was too late, for me, anyway. It’s not just that you’d have never forgiven me for letting _her_ die, it’s just that – I _knew_ you also didn’t like what you saw, in _that_ future. And it would have been worth it, I _know_ , but still –”

He stopped, looking down at the ground.

“ _Still_ , I remembered what you told me once. That if someone we _love_ dies, we should go on for them, too. I can’t – I can’t give you up. I _won’t_. But while I work on it – something tells me you’d have liked _this_ better than the nothing you’d have found before. Besides me.”

Sure, explaining Berenice their current situation wasn’t something he had the faintest clue of how to approach, but after all, when she _would_ come back to life, because she would, and he’d die trying, it still would have been more than ten years since she died.

After _that_ , he’s fairly sure that the weird as _hell_ status of things between him and Horst wouldn’t be that much worse.

Never mind that she always said she wanted –

He shook his head. “As soon as I can,” he whispered. “I swear. And I hope you’ll like it here, too.”

He turned his back on the door, buttoning up his coat and grudgingly admitting to himself that Zarenyia’s angora sweater _did_ keep him indeed very warm.

He locked the cellar’s door and then left from the front entrance, where Horst was already standing.

“Everything set?” Cabal asked.

“Alisha said she has things under control here. Leonie _did_ send that telegram yesterday saying she’s waiting for us in London and that she might have info. Given who she left with, I’m sure we won’t be gone for long.”

Right. With both Zarenyia and Miss Smith.

“You know,” Cabal said, his voice very low, as they walked down the path through his sleeping garden to the path headed for the town, “she _did_ tell me she wanted children. Just days before – _before_.”

He said nothing when he felt Horst’s hand touch the small of his back.

“Does this mean that you think she wouldn’t mind –”

“I’m saying that she would probably be overjoyed if she were to wake up and find out _you_ somehow found yourself with one, not that she’d have much trouble believing she came from you rather than from some weird ghost adoption you managed to get yourself into while in a parallel dimension.”

Horst put an arm around him and he didn’t even think of getting out of its hold.

“If you have to explain her _how_ you did resurrect her ten years after the fact, I think that the ghost adoption isn’t even _that_ much more complicated.”

Fair point, Cabal thought. “Never mind that I’m sure she’ll be delighted in ganging up with Leonie against you.”

Cabal rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that it’ll be to find you on their side, too?”

“I don’t know,” Horst said, “I might take pity on you.”

He slipped a finger under the white scarf Cabal was wearing, brushing it against the fresh bite marks it was keeping hidden. “Someone will have to,” he added then. “And by the way, wasn’t it worth it to _not_ call in your precious demonic favors?”

Cabal’s lips did turn into the closest shape to a genuine smile’s they had taken in the last ten years or so, unable to stop themselves. Damn him to hell and back, as if they both weren’t already, that was a horribly low question, which only had one answer, Cabal thought as Horst’s rough fingertips kept on resting on the still tender skin of his collarbone and as he pictured the damned orange fence and the attic with sunlight pouring in, and as he thought back on the hours he had spent painting those walls and about how at the end even if he was _tired_ it had felt completely worth it.

Damn Horst for always being somehow right, really, but by this point he wasn’t even angry about it anymore, not really, and so it was with uttermost seriousness that he lowered his spectacles, so that his eyes met Horst’s, and he said –

“Fine, _yes_ , it was.”

 

 

End.


End file.
